PricewaterhouseCoopers CEO Chris Clark welcomes employees to his office for a different kind of chat -- their personal and families' well-being, GORDON PITTS writes.

GORDON PITTS
Wednesday, February 21, 2007

When Canadian employees at PricewaterhouseCoopers get sick, they can call up a new internal website for help. Beyond its rich information, the site carries an unusual personal invitation -- to walk into the CEO's office and talk confidentially about their health challenges.

Yet, Chris Clark's offer comes as little surprise inside the firm. He has been totally open about his own battle with cancer.

"When my doctor told me I had cancer, I knew that the battle ahead would be challenging and that that I would need support from my friends, family and colleagues," Mr. Clark, 53, explains in a pop-up message that appears on the PwC Canada site devoted to wellness.

Even before the chief executive officer's personal crisis, PwC had been striving to position itself as a company dedicated to employee health. But last summer, Mr. Clark went through successful treatment for cancer that originated at the base of his tongue -- and that has given the campaign a very human face.

PwC wants to be known as a leader in building a wellness culture -- and it is not alone. Surveys conducted by the Conference Board of Canada show that health information and promotion programs are fast-growing components of human resource strategies. The reasons reflect the soft and hard edges of capitalism: Companies with such programs report higher employee engagement, as well as bottom-line savings.

Wellness programs will become more critical as the work force ages, thus intensifying the focus on managing disability and health, says Ruth Wright, a senior research associate studying human resources issues with the Conference Board.

Skilled workers already enjoy a seller's market in terms of job possibilities. For recruiters, a key selling point is a supportive culture. "It's not just about programs -- it's also about leaders, and how they comport themselves. Do they walk the talk?" Ms. Wright says.

Mr. Clark does. A modest man not given to overstatement, he has become a front-line advocate for openness in discussing health issues and providing networks of support, both in PwC and the communities served by the professional services firm.

He knows his own health issues were not necessarily typical, both in the challenges and the treatment. Still, "I bring a perspective, I think, that very few leaders of an organization bring," he says, while adding that, of course, it is "not by choice."

That perspective took shape on a dreary day last May when Mr. Clark trudged up Toronto's Yonge Street from his bank-tower office to St. Michael's Hospital to learn the results of a biopsy. The doctors told him that the lumps he had felt on his neck were from cancer in the lymph nodes. Upon further tests, he discovered the source was at the base of the tongue.

It was devastating but also mystifying for a man who had radiated good health. As a student at Queen's University, he was a top hockey player and after graduation had played professionally for a couple of seasons in France. Even as he rose in the accounting firm, he kept playing hockey into his early 50s, while skiing and running regularly.

"At the end of the day, why was I impacted by this disease?," he wonders now. "It's a smoker's disease; I'm a non-smoker. Who knows? Nobody can give me that answer. It just happened to be me."

Mr. Clark, married with two daughters, says that the toughest challenge came in the first two weeks after his diagnosis, when he had to assess his responsibilities as a CEO while working through his personal crisis.

He wondered whether he should step down as CEO, and for how long. Meanwhile, on the personal side, other thoughts raced through his mind: Did he get the correct diagnosis? Should he get a second and third opinion? Should he be heading to the Mayo Clinic?

He learned the prognosis was favourable for complete recovery after treatment. Then came the issue of how the firm should be run in his three-month-plus absence. He helped create a senior committee to manage the operations while he was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation.

But once he left the office, he was truly gone -- no phone calls, no constant checking. That full departure partly reflected the reality that he was too weak to work; it also showed Mr. Clark's confidence in his team. In addition, it demonstrated to PwC employees that, when they are sick, they should take the time to get better, and their careers could wait until they got back.

The other big issue was attitude. "I think anybody who has been through this kind of personal challenge will say one of the most important things is staying positive," he says. "You can't focus on the things you can't control, you have to focus on what you can do to get better."

He did that partly by reaching out to support networks, inside and outside the firm. He drew on the strength of his family -- but also his wider family. Colleagues he had never met sent him stories of how their own family or friends had beaten this particular ailment.

It is that experience that he vows to replicate in PwC's wellness program -- the sense of a community of support. Lots of companies, of course, provide information on health care and benefits to help people through tough times. The PwC approach is holistic -- which means guidance on prevention and general health, as well as advice and networks when illness strikes.

The core of the approach is the new internal website that offers a plethora of information, including details on such things as a benefit of up to $1,200 for fitness classes and memberships, the firm's employee assistance program, and absentee options for personal sickness, or for a family member.

PwC has been working on such policies for years. One employee who has benefited is Suzanne Lusby, a Toronto director, whose mother was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) in the summer of 2005. She says human resources staff laid out various options for leaves of absence to be with her mother and family. Even when she returned to work in February, 2006, assignments were geared to allow her to spend evenings with her mother.

Ms. Lusby's mother died last September, but, she says, "we were able to spend time with her. We're so glad we did what we did. We're at peace with ourselves." She believes the flexibility reflects the kind of culture PwC is building.

But such policies are a constant work in progress, which Mr. Clark acknowledges. He realizes that all firms face big challenges in balancing the official side of managing absenteeism -- getting people back to work, demanding forms and doctors' signatures -- with the heightened sensitivity of sick people.

"Because of the experience I went through, I have talked to our people about this," he says, adding that he believes the approach is getting better. "It can be very difficult to deal with the administrative side at the same time you are dealing with the emotional and physical side."

Ms. Wright of the Conference Board puts it another way: "Let them know you love them and don't let them flounder."

But Mr. Clark believes his experiences have changed him in ways beyond wellness programs. "I think I have changed as a manager, with more humility and clearly more empathy for people who are working through challenges in their own right."

Climbing the corporate ladder with multiple sclerosis

Nathalie Brouard was 33, a fast-rising chartered accountant on the verge of becoming partner, when she got the devastating news: She had multiple sclerosis.

That could have been crushing for a young career that had been showered with dreams and gold medals. But that's not Ms. Brouard's style. She treated her affliction as something she just had to deal with.

She remembers sitting down with her senior partners at PricewaterhouseCoopers and discussing her accounting future as an employee with MS. "I guarantee I will be the same person, although it might be tough," she told her associates at that meeting 12 years ago.

She said her thinking was that "if I stop everything, I think that's just going to be the end of the world for me. I don't think that's going to happen."

That's not what happened. Despite pain and fatigue, and some long absences from work, her career has been a triumph. She has attained big promotions, important transfers, enriched training and the flexibility to do her job while still dealing with her illness.

For Ms. Brouard, now 44 and a PwC partner in Montreal, it is a signal to others with MS that they can have highly productive, rewarding careers. One key, she says, is employers like hers, willing to value them as a skilled resource and invest in their development, rather than shrugging them off.

Her story suggests that PwC's wellness culture is not an overnight story, but something that has been building for well over a decade.

MS is a disease that attacks the central nervous system, often impairing speech, energy and, in its most visible manifestation, mobility.

Mr. Brouard is fully mobile. Thus, "the good thing is I walk perfectly -- the bad thing is all the symptoms are not visible so that somebody who would look at me would not believe that I have anything. It's just internal -- extreme fatigue and a lot of pain every day."

That pain has certainly affected her ability to work at full speed all the time. But PwC has allowed her to advance or contract her role, based on her own sense of what she could do.

Six months after her MS diagnosis, she did make partner in 1995. Right away, she was able to move from her base then in Quebec City to a big, new job in Toronto, specializing in international tax.

"The firm showed very strongly that they believed in me. For them it was business as usual," she says. "I was Nathalie. Period."

Then in 2000, she had a very serious MS attack, forcing her to leave work for three months. The firm stood with her. When she was ready to come back part-time, it suggested that she might take on a new tax practice in intellectual property.

Two years later, her health declined again and she realized she could no longer service clients to the standards she expected. Again, that was her choice. She sat down with management, which came up with 25 possible areas where she could work comfortably.

At that point, she moved into developing tax-education programs in the Montreal office, as well as doing some work on a national scale.

But now, even that role is getting difficult as the MS and other health problems intensify. She can see now that she will soon have to go on long-term disability.

She approaches her dilemma like a veteran hockey player, whose skating has slowed down. "When you don't have the tools any more to play at the same level, at some point you say: 'Hey, I'd probably better retire before I just can't skate any more.' "

"It's a fact of life. You have to be honest with yourself, and with the firm."

-- Gordon Pitts